2004-2005 Season The Hammerhead Consort - New Music Concerts

The term “Aeolian” (or eolian) can be used in association with the wind, or with an early church mode bearing
the same name; the title Eolian Braid was chosen with reference to the former.
Constructed especially for Eolian Braid, twenty-one sets of wind chimes were used to make a recorded
accompaniment for use in live performance. Existing as a background layer characterized by diverse rhythms
and timbres, the recorded chimes create the illusory presence of different winds that come and go almost
unpredictably throughout the piece. The two pianos, vibraphone and marimba generate a foreground layer that,
unlike the chimes, is a texture of controlled rhythmic processes involving repetition, pattern, phase and
transformation. The complex counterpoint arising from the co-existing rhythmic strands within each of the two
layers and the juxtaposition and intertwining of those layers on the larger level produce a textural counterpoint
that, overall, might be described best as a rhythmic braid.
While compositional techniques used in Eolian Braid might be traced to a range of sources, certain works by
the composer György Ligeti stand as the most inspiring and influential.
Malcolm Forsyth
— Howard Bashaw
Canadian composer Forsyth continues to enjoy a distinguished international career as a much-performed writer
of more than one hundred-and-thirty works, including three symphonies, much other orchestral music,
chamber music (especially for brass and strings), vocal and instrumental solos and more recently, choral
music.
He was named “Canadian Composer of the Year” by the Canadian Music Council in 1989, and has received
many other awards, including three JUNOs for “Best Classical Composition” — 1987, 1994 and 1998 —
since his arrival in Canada from his native South Africa in 1968. He took up his post as Professor at the
University of Alberta in Edmonton in the same year and was for the last five years prior to his retirement in
2002 Composer-in-Residence there. Distinguished performers such as Maureen Forrester, Charles Dutoit and
Judith Forst have commissioned and premiered his works; his works have seen performances on six
continents. A celebratory CD of his daughter Amanda’s performance of his Cello Concerto, Electra Rising, his
saxophone concerto, Tre Vie, and Valley of a Thousand Hills, for chamber orchestra, was released in 1997, and
one of Sun Songs, with Judith Forst (mezzo-soprano) in 2000. The years 1999 and 2000 were especially
prolific ones for Forsyth, with no fewer than ten new works entering the catalogue. His Concerto for Eight
(2003) received rave reviews after its many performances in March 2003. The Double Concerto, for viola,
cello & orchestra, is scheduled for its world premiere in October 2004.
umGcomo (1999)
When Béla Bartók wrote his monumental Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion he spawned a new class of
instrumental chamber music which has brought many new similar works into being. Ensembles have been
formed simply with the intention of promoting the Bartók work and expanding the repertoire of its
instrumentation. The Hammerhead Consort of Edmonton is one such group and umGcomo was written
especially for it.
The word umGcomo is Zulu, and means drums. Pronunciation of the word, however, is almost impossible for
most people, since the ‘gc’ consonant is one of the “click” sounds found in Zulu and several other South
African languages. Rendering it, as is common, as a “k” does not suffice here though, since that would turn